Jacks are often used in association with towed vehicles, such as trailers. Jacks may be used for many different functions in association with towed vehicles, including, without limitation, holding the towed vehicles in place when not connected to towing vehicles, appropriately positioning towed vehicles to operatively connect with towing vehicles, storing towed vehicles or any such similar situations. Additionally, jacks may be used with both loaded and unload towed vehicles. This may apply significantly varying loads on the jacks causing them to operate under significantly varying conditions. Jacks, therefore, may need to be capable of operatively functioning under these varying conditions.
It is often desirable to quickly provide elongation of the jack during operation. Jacks may, therefore, include a drop leg where there is no mechanical cranking required to achieve significant jack elongation or contraction in a short amount of time. This may be particularly useful at the beginning or completion of the lifting process of the jack.
However, when greater loads are applied to the jack, the mechanism that holds the drop leg in either of the raised or lowered position must be capable of handling this greater load. This may result in a more complex and expensive drop leg holding mechanism or may limit the available uses of a particular jack. These varieties of operating conditions may require that a jack be used only for a single specific or limited use.
Therefore, there is a need for a drop leg mechanism that may be used in a jack with a drop leg to permit such jack to be used in a wide variety of operating conditions and be used on various towed vehicles. There is also a need for a drop leg mechanism that may be efficiently operated.